roachboy

i understand the idea that the bible must be interpreted literally to be at once the absolute height of arrogance and almost mind-boggling in its naievete.
arrogance in that it assumes direct communication between finite understanding and the infinite.
naieve in that the whole system has to rely upon a loose-to-arbitrary notion of "inspiration" to operate at all to the exclusion of problems with the texts themselves, problems created (for example) by the fact that before the council of nicea there were lots of gospels being generated by various writers, each with an equivalent claim to divine inspiration (who decides what is and is not so inspired anyway?) and that the selection from amongst them at nicea was predicated more on matters pertaining to hierarchy (which texts would fit best within a hierarchical church) than anything else. that a major trend within protestant forms influenced by luther, working within a framework of nominalism-lite, chooses to ignore these problems changes nothing about them.

the bible is obviously an extremely complex, heterodox assemblage of texts. interpretation is a very difficult process in with texts like these even under the best of circumstances. the notion that divine inspiration could be twisted around to imply that the texts are written in such a way that someone who does not read with any particular regularity or intensity could understand what is going on seems to me folly. or vanity.

as for the olarger tactical question (how to moderates deal with thier far right counterparts) that requires more time than i have at the moment, so defer i will.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite